Cutting Room for April 27

Jeremy Renner, who is somewhere between awesome and kinda creepy, has replaced Matt Damon. No, he hasn’t become Ben Affleck’s hetero life-mate; he’s going to step into the lead role in The Bourne Legacy. The story won’t see Renner as Jason Bourne but is likely to feature the same vomit-inducing shaky-cam violence and a seemingly complex (but really rather simple) plot. Congrats to you, Jeremy! Nothing says you’ve made it like landing the top spot in the fourth film in a franchise everyone thought was done.

As is still legally required by the congressional act known as “The Wicked Awesome Buddies Law,” because we just mentioned Matt Damon, we now have to do a Ben Affleck story. Turns out that the mediocre-actor-turned-way-better-director has officially made Argo his next project. Affleck will reportedly also star in the film, which follows the true story of the rescue of American citizens from Iran by CIA agents pretending to make a sci-fi movie. Sadly, this means Affleck will be unable to star in Baz Luhrman’s remake of The Great Gatsby. Did I say “sadly?” I did not mean that. I meant “Thank the good Lord.”

In sad, joyless, wretched news, Tim Hetherington, the brilliant war photographer and documentarian, was killed by gutless cowards in Libya. His last film, Restrepo, was perhaps the finest of the modern crop of war documentaries, and his achingly important voice and vision will be sorely missed. This serves as a reminder that in an age of compromised journalistic integrity, there are still those willing to stand in the line of fire to tell us the truth. Tim, you will be sorely missed.

Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to {encode="film@thereader.com" title="film@thereader.com"}. Check out Ryan on the radio on CD 105.9 (Fridays at around 7:30 a.m.), on his blog at thereader.com/film/C19 and on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).